Vice-president Joe Biden will have something to do besides twiddle his thumbs.
WASHINGTON, Dec 21 (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Barack Obama unveiled a new task force on Sunday charged with helping struggling working families, as an aide said Obama’s economic recovery plan would be expanded to try to save 3 million jobs.
The White House Task Force on Working Families, to be headed by Vice President-elect Joe Biden, would aim to boost education and training and protect incomes and retirement security of middle-class and working families whose plight Obama had made a central issue of his campaign.
Biden’s panel of top-level officials and labor, business, and activist representatives would help keep working families “front and center every day in our work,” Obama said in a statement released by his transition office.
Biden said the economy was in worse shape than he and Obama had thought it was.
“President-elect Obama and I know the economic health of working families has eroded, and we intend to turn that around,” Biden told ABC’s “This Week.”
“We’ve got to begin to stem this bleeding here and begin to stop the loss of jobs in the creation of jobs,” he said.
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The President-elect has set the following goals for the task force:
· Expanding education and lifelong training opportunities
· Improving work and family balance
· Restoring labor standards, including workplace safety
· Helping to protect middle-class and working-family incomes
· Protecting retirement securityMembers of the White House Task Force on Working Families will include the Secretaries of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Commerce, as well as the Directors of the National Economic Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the Domestic Policy Council, and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors.
Can the champion of the credit card industry protect the working man? We shall see.
